


it is at moments after I have dreamed

by ashleykay



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Love Letters, Post-Canon, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 09:08:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15704154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleykay/pseuds/ashleykay
Summary: They make the world anew. Gilbert and Anne find their way to each other, the long way.





	it is at moments after I have dreamed

**Author's Note:**

> Titles taken from e.e. cummings-it is at moments after I have dreamed

 

  1. **with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise**




 

 

There was heartbreak in her eyes. They filled with tears and her pretty mouth had made a light 'o'. And there, without her speaking he could see her no. She did not move, still and frozen, as if time had stopped all together.

 

It wounded him.

 

Gilbert Blythe was not a poet. His words tended towards logic and precision. He left passion and flowers and largeness to his Anne. Or not his Anne at all. But yes, yes, she was his, even if he was not hers. He would always carry her with him.

 

He had planned to try for her. To live up to her idea of romance and love. He had lead them to Hester's garden. To the stone bench where they had many times before sat, their arms brushing against one another, as they had whispered and laughed.

 

He had thought of a many things to say. To drop to his knee, to tell her of his heart. Of his dreams of her. To kiss the tips of her fingers and say there is only you. There could only be you. To swallow down his nerves and speak, to speak of her fine eyes and the quirk of her brows. He had wanted to say: I love you. I am yours and I want to give you a house and a home, to pull you into my arms and into a room with a bed and lay with you, to wake with you. To reach into the night and find your warmth and your soft curling downy hair. To live never alone.

 

Instead their had been small blue flowers peaking from the ground. Grass that had begun to green. And her, Anne, his slight wonderful girl. Her head shadowed by the sun.

 

He had been awestruck. His breath shallow and almost gone. Her hair aflame and like his very dreams, red, always, always red.

 

And he said, “Marry Me.” It was not a question, how could it be. For there was never a doubt where Gilbert was, there would always be Anne. It, to him, was a predestined thing.

 

But there she stood. Her warm bright hair and her now shaking shoulders. She was going to say no. Her long fingers were on her lips.

 

And there his heart which beat only in the words of 'Anne, Anne, Anne' was slowing. It was a faint sound now, still thrumming with her name but far more whispered now.

 

She spoke and he heard but did not listen to her. Her sweet mouth was forming words like chum and special friend. She had not said no, but her head shook.

 

He had never lied to her. Could not fathom a moment where he should. But now, now he must. He had to smile at her. To nod and tell her he understood. That nothing could change. Even though everything was different. There was no way to go back. To dream in red and hope again.

 

He was her friend. But it was not enough. He wanted it to be. Wanted to be careless enough to give her that. But he knew, he could not ignore, that in some ways he could not go back. That forever now he would have the truth carved into him. Her friendship it could not be enough. To look at her, to have her close yet to far to hold.

 

And he knew, she could not go back either, she would not forget how he felt. She would create a distance. She did not want to hurt him. Could not imagine it. And yet, she would know the truth too. His friendship was all she needed. But it was tinged now with his feelings.

 

And so at the end, tears still in her eyes and his beating wordy heart, they walked back.

 

And his feet, without meaning to crushed the barely grown flowers under his feet.

 

  1. **the genuine apparition of your smile**




 

He had left again for medical school when the flowers had come into full bloom. He had climbed the stairs of the departing train and not once looked back. He was Lot. But his heart was to much like Lot's wife. It had twisted it's neck and peered back. It beat wildly for Avonlea, for Anne. For his father's grave and for the little garden where blue flowers grew high and wild.

 

But his eyes would not turn back. He must move, even though his feet did not. So he sat and let the train carry him far away.

 

He had meant to write her. But also he hadn't. He wanted to write and be fine and for the old softness and fun to be there. But it was not true. If he had written he knew he would instead tell her through every word, in the blank open space between each letter and each beginning and end of every sentence how he felt. Of his love and dreams and still undead hopes. And he could not wound her in such a way. He could not have her feeling that she was hurting him and therefore that he was hurting her.

 

So he started letters. Sometimes he finished them. They spoke of studies and fears and patients he saw die and those he saw live. He told her of the babies he saw born dead and the ones who grasped with their little hands his own large finger.

 

He told her of the days and the nights and the tiredness he could not get rid of. He wrote pages and pages. Whole books about the life he was living so far away.

 

In sentences he spoke. He whimpered and wept and still kept living. He had told her in his latest letter, that he was searching for a place to set up a practice, because even now, a year and months and days after leaving he could not bare to return. To go back to a place where she lived and she would slumber and a place where he could not really talk to her the same again.

 

He could not set himself as a country doctor there, where he might one day be forced to hear of her wedding, or worse attend. To maybe have to deliver a baby that was hers but not his.

 

It was to much to live with.

 

And when he was done with the last unsent letter, he knew he could write her no more. He could not continue that way. To love her in words. He could not fathom not loving her at all. But it was time, it had to be time, to open his hand and let her go.

 

He should give her that.

 

He should give himself that.

 

His love for her would be his to carry but not his to show and grieve aloud.

 

And yet, as if the universe had known. A letter of a hand not his own arrived. It was a grey dull morning when the knock had come with the missive.

 

He knew the script as well as his own. In dark black words that slanted towards the right was his name in her delicate fierce hand.

 

But he found he could not open it. It trembled in his hand and he dropped it on his desk. It was a curiosity he did not want to quench. If he opened it he would know. If he did not, there was a dream, it could say anything he hoped.

 

So he left it there for days. Looking at it's contrasting whiteness and darkness. He thought of the horror it could contain. It could tell him of a wedding. It could be filled with anger at his not writing to her.

 

It left him unable to sleep. Thinking of it and when he did he dreamed of it. He had moved the letter to his bedside table and now it was the thing he slept and woke to.

 

And when he could take no more, finally he broke the seal.

 

_Gilbert,_

 

_I am sitting in Hester's garden. I have been sitting here so long. My hands trembling as I tried to write you. I came after school let out. I came with paper and a pen and my slate to write on. But I wept before I could write before I could even put one word to the paper. I wept for my dear lovely friend who is away, so distant. I wept for the last time I was here. I continued to weep. And found I could not stop. And felt ashamed should anyone happen on me, sitting on the very bench I had once loved so much, legs folded and pen shaking in my hand. I am a teacher and a women but I cried like a child._

 

_Do not fret that is in anger at you. For it is not. It is for how lost we have become to each other. It is that our lovely darling friendship is gone. And it is not only because of you. It is because of me. It is because I wanted to write to you. But could not find the words to tell you. Or no, no, it was for something else. That I would write to you and you would know the depth of my deception._

 

_For Gilbert I have lied to you. I have lied to you for a long time. I have been afraid. So terribly afraid._

 

_Does that makes sense to you? No, it can not, can it? I want it too. It feels to wild in my chest. Like a trapped bird, it beats so quickly. I can not contain it any longer. I can not go on with the ache of it. I knew that yesterday, I knew I must tell you. I walked by our little garden. And I saw the little blue flowers they were beginning to come alive again. Just as the were so long ago. Their short green stems were just bursting from the ground but the sly little buds were warm and blue and I could not breath. I could not find any air when I saw them. They were surrounding our tiny stone bench. And it was to much for me._

 

_I missed you so terribly in that moment. I have missed you always. I have never, never stopped missing you. But then, in the fading day, it was a physical thing. I knew I must tell you. That I could not put it off any more time._

 

_I see you everywhere. I see you in the walk to school, in the long wooded area that we met. You are a phantom haunting me. You follow me everywhere I go. You sit with me in the schoolhouse. Your face, so clear to me, stares from your old seat. The voice I know so well, it speaks to me along the edge of your orchard. You are here. Sitting with me on this bench. I could almost reach out and touch you. But I do not. I know it is not the real you. And I can not bare to have my hands touch nothing. To sink into the air around me. To know for certain that you are not real._

 

_You are at the graveyard, when I go and see Matthew, I feel you. I feel the burn of your hand and the small of my back. Through my clothes, sinking into my skin. There is you. Only you._

 

_The truth, Gil, is this. I would disappoint you. I would make a horrible wife. Do you remember, when we brought you the food, when I told you that?_

 

_And I would. I would, my own sweet Gilbert. I knew it, without doubt, that day when we were here. When you said so clearly marry me. I knew, knew so quickly, that I could not. No matter what my heart my say. For you see, that is the lie. I wanted to say yes. Although, you did not ask. It was such a soft demand. And I want to follow, to trail behind it. To find myself falling into it. Into you. To raise my arms and curl my fingers in your hair._

 

_To kiss you then. The way I imagined when I was alone and unashamed. To kiss the lovely quirk of your jaw._

 

_To never be let go of._

 

_But I knew I could not._

 

_You see? Do you understand?_

 

_You would grow to dislike me. You would, if I had told you this, then. You would have kissed me I know. Let your burning, scorching hand slip to my hips, my waist. You would have swayed my fears. And I would have gone to you. I would have failed to do what is right._

 

_I would make you a disappointing wife. I am homely and strange. You a respected doctor, do not need a wife like that. You do not need a wife that would daydream and forget to take out the pies, the dinners. It would burn and I, I Gilbert would be thinking of trees and fairies and places so far away. I would forget to dust half way through. I would get caught in writing, you deserve a wife that would remember._

 

_That you could come back to a lady. A sweet thing that would make you a home. I could not give you that. I would try. Oh Gil, I would try. But I am sure that I would fail. And I can not, will not, have you come to look at me and regret what you had done._

 

_I have seen that. I know what it looks like when husbands come to find their wives lacking. To grow distant and sorrowful at having chosen wrong._

 

_And I could live with almost anything, but never that._

_So I gave you the freedom to find a suitable wife. To go to your far away school and fall for a better girl._

 

_For one with a steady background and one that you would not wake one day to regret. I had to give you that, because I loved you so much._

 

_Do you understand, now?_

 

_That I loved you enough to let you go._

 

_That I had to lie to give you what you deserve. That I could not let you have the truth, for I know you lovely Gil. You would have made me weak._

 

_Now you know what a spiteful little thing I am. And now, with this letter, you know how selfish. I should keep it to myself. I should let you live there, so happy, without knowing. But I could not carry it any longer._

 

_And now you know. Forgive me Gil. Forgive what I have told you._

 

_But know I love you. That I do not know how to stop._

 

_Anne._

 

The letter dropped from his fingers. It was more than he had ever hoped. He knew now what must be done.

 

So he gathered what he needed. Packed his little bag and again did not look back. And this time there was no feeling of loss. School was done and he had nothing here.

 

But he had a whole world waiting just a small distance away. For it was small now. Small because his heart was whole and strong.

 

He boarded the train and thought what he could do. How he could tell her the very real truth. There was never going to be a day where he could regret her. He would kiss he fingers. He would kiss that deceitful small sweet mouth and tell her. He would not leave until she knew.

 

He did not need her to follow him. He could if she bid him follow her. To go wherever she choose. He would find her again, and this time, he would not go.

 

**iii. when my breast wears the intolerant brightness of your charms**

 

He finds her at the schoolhouse. She does not at first notice him. And so he looks at her. Memorizes the lines of her. Her beauty that astounds him.

 

He notices the vase full of the bloomed blue flowers, and feels so full. So happy.

 

Then she looks up at him. And the speech he had rehearsed the whole way here seems to fall away. There is no one but her and him and they are all that could ever matter.

 

He crosses the distance to her. He would cross any distance to her.

 

And without stopping himself, he takes his hands and pulls her as close as air allows.

 

There first kiss, the first of so many, is hungry, it should never be sated. She does not pull away. She does as she has always wanted and pulls at his hair. She opens up to him. And it will never be enough. If he should live to a thousand he would never have his fill. She must know, he has to tell her. That he can not see the future. He can not know what is to come, but he knows this, he knows he will never regret her. Could never wish her away. There is nothing else he can see of the future but that.

 

And then, she is pushing him away, shaking her head at him.

 

But he stops her, cups her face with both his hands, runs his fingers across that stubborn mouth.

 

“I do not care if you never cook, if we eat nothing but black burnt food for all the days we live. If the house is covered in dust. I will only need you. If you wish, I will never become a doctor, I will stay at home and we will on your teacher's wages. I will cook for you and clean for you. I will, no, I can not be without you. I do not want you to follow me. I do not want to follow you. I want to walk with you, with your hand in mine. With your pace as my pace. If you want I will build you a desk with my own hands, so you can write till your fingers bleed. And I will build you our very own garden, filled with nothing but blue flowers. But only love me. Let me love you. Please Anne.” He felt like weeping. Maybe he was. “Let me love you, because I can not stop.”

 

She kissed the thumb that ran across her lip. She kissed his other fingers and the palm of his hand. And he thought or spoke or wept, marry me. Again he did not ask. And she did not answer, instead her lips found his and both their faces were wet. He said again and again without saying a word, marry me. And he knew she would. She would and he would. They would have each other. They would make a world for themselves. He would cook and she would cook. She would clean and he would. They would share. They would hold each other and make the world anew.

 

They would not part now.

 

He would not tell her of the things he knew for sure. He would not force her to hear the words, that even now she could not believe. That he was never going to look at her and wish that this moment hadn't happened.

 

But he would show her. He would let her see, as he looked at her tomorrow and the next day. As she walked down the aisle toward him and the birds sang. In their little house filled with dreams. She would know because she could not help but see. Because he would never stop showing her.

 

And one day, one day she would believe.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, I really like love letters. They make me happy. I am not sure how to write happy so forgive me for not getting it quite right. But I just wanted to write something to do with love and hope. Also all errors are mine because I write then read it over and because I am filled with impatience I post. Also, I woke up at 5 to get my son to school and had, had a dream about writing this and I am awful tired. So it make little sense to qnyone but me.


End file.
